José Guillermo Abel López Portillo y Pacheco (Spanish pronunciation: [xoˈse ˈlopes poɾˈtiʝo]; 16 June 1920 – 17 February 2004) was a Mexican writer, lawyer, and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 58th president of Mexico from 1976 to 1982.

[7][8] Shortly after leaving office, during the presidency of his successor Miguel de la Madrid, numerous officials who had worked under the López Portillo administration were prosecuted for corruption, the most notorious cases being Arturo Durazo and Jorge Díaz Serrano.

He was the great-great-great-grandson of José María Narváez (1768–1840), a Spanish explorer who was the first to enter the Strait of Georgia, in present-day British Columbia, and the first to view the site now occupied by Vancouver.

[citation needed] He studied law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) before beginning his political career.

He held several positions in the administrations of his two predecessors before being appointed to serve as finance minister under Luis Echeverría, a close friend from childhood, between 1973 and 1975.

He undertook an ambitious program to promote Mexico's economic development with revenues stemming from the discovery of new petroleum reserves in the states of Veracruz and Tabasco by Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the country's publicly owned oil company.

In 1980, Mexico joined Venezuela in the Pact of San José, a foreign aid project to sell oil at preferential rates to countries in Central America and the Caribbean.

[20] In the year leading to the end of his term as president on 1 December 1982, López Portillo personally chose two candidates as possibilities to replace himself, following the succession ritual established by his party.

The other, ultimately his successor, was Miguel de la Madrid, who was chosen for his financial and administrative skills, which were deemed much more necessary after the devaluation of the peso in February 1982 and the subsequent economic crisis.

On 1 September 1982, at his final annual Address to the Congress ("Informe de Gobierno"), López Portillo gave a famous speech where he condemned businessmen and bankers responsible for capital flight, claimed that the crisis was not his fault ("I'm responsible for the helm, but the storm is not my fault"), announced the nationalization of the banks ("They have looted us, but Mexico is not finished, they won't loot us again!

After leaving the presidency, López Portillo divorced Romano and married in 1995 his longtime partner, the Yugoslavian-born actress Sasha Montenegro.